From A.I. workshops to 2.5 hours less admin a day

Project Overview

Who is Bouwunie?

Bouwunie is a leading organization for SMEs and self-employed entrepreneurs in the construction sector. The organization wanted to optimize its internal processes and improve its service to members.

The challenge

Bouwunie wanted to build A.I. and automation into its operations strategically. Not as a one-off experiment, but department by department, with the team along for the ride.

"Where can A.I. and automation make the biggest impact within our organization, department by department?"

Project Delivery

The approach

First let the team experience what A.I. can do, then map out where the payoff is, then build. That order mattered: people who've had the tools in their own hands think more sharply about where they belong.

1. Two hands-on workshops

Through the Digital Academy, we started with two hands-on sessions on A.I. and ChatGPT. We explained the basics and demonstrated tools for data analysis and automating admin work.

One question sat at the center of it: how do you get to grips with a party's program? With elections coming up, Bouwunie wanted to be able to answer member questions quickly and accurately about where political parties stood. We gave the team concrete techniques for filtering long documents and comparing them side by side on the topics that matter to the construction sector.

The advantage: the team now analyzes and compares party programs faster and more accurately, and can give members sharper answers.

2. Strategic mapping per department

Next, we mapped out where A.I. could have the biggest impact. Our approach had four steps: an intake conversation with a questionnaire to understand how things currently work, interactive on-site workshops to find the biggest pain points per department, one-on-one conversations with employees who do a lot of admin work, and finally a proposed solution with the start of implementation.

Those one-on-one conversations delivered the most. That's where it became clear which processes were really eating up time.

3. A CustomGPT for the admin team

Every day, an Excel file comes in with 20 columns and 100 rows: companies, contact details, training centers and names of participants. The right data has to be pulled from it, split across several PDFs, each with an accompanying email listing the prices. And there are always a few exceptions that need a human eye.

A standard automation tool mostly raised questions: what is this, won't it make mistakes, won't it be expensive to set up. The middle-ground solution was a CustomGPT with a four-step prompt:

• Step 1: we give you an Excel file.
• Step 2: you pull out these 8 columns.
• Step 3: check the knowledge base with our basic structure and place the info into that structure.
• Step 4: turn that into separate PDFs per client.

The time it took to build: a 30-minute call about the current process, a ChatGPT transcript to write the process out, 20 minutes of our own thinking, a re-listen to the call along the way, and 75 minutes sitting with the employee to set everything up step by step and fine-tune it.

The advantage: no new system to learn, just an assistant that takes over the existing work, with the employee checking the final result.

Results

For the admin team, the CustomGPT delivers immediate results: 2.5 hours a day less work processing client data. That time now goes into strategic projects and better support for members.

The workshops and the mapping also produced a roadmap for further rollout, plus a team that now uses A.I. tools in their daily work themselves. Analyzing party programs is faster and more accurate, and members notice.

Curious where A.I. and automation could make the biggest impact in your organization? Get in touch with Flowkify.